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Monday, December 20, 2010

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.

My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
a lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light.
Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."

"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.

My Gramps died at 'Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of 'Nam,'
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.

"I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?"
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.

Leigh Nash of the band Sixpence None The Richer describes the origin of the band’s name:

“It comes from a book by C.S. Lewis called Mere Christianity. A little boy asks his father if he can get a sixpence -- a very small amount of English currency -- to go and get a gift for his father. The father gladly accepts the gift and he’s really happy with it, but he also realizes that he’s not any richer for the transaction. C.S. Lewis was comparing that to his belief that God has given him, and us, the gifts that we possess, and to serve Him the way we should, we should do it humbly -- realizing how we got the gifts in the first place.”

Here’s Leigh singing ♫ Breathe Your Name

Lyrics ♫
It's every day
I'm in this place
I feel this way
I feel the same
It's every day
I'm in this place
I feel this way
I feel the same

Is it all inside my head
Is it all inside my head
I'll view the list
And take my pick
I view my faith
And make a choice
'Cause it's nobody else's but mine

But you are in my heart
I can feel your beat
And you move my mind
From behind the wheel
When I lose control
I can only breathe your name
I can only breathe your name

So many days within this race
I need the truth
I need some grace
I need the path
To find my place
I need some truth
I need some grace
The part of you
That's part of me
We'll never die
We'll never leave
And it's nobody else's but mine

You are in my heart
I can feel your beat
And you move my mind
From behind the wheel
When I lose control
I can only breathe your name
I can only breathe your name

You'll view the list
And take your pick
You'll view my faith
And make the choice
'Cause I'm nobody else's but yours

And you're in my heart
I can feel your beat
And you move my mind
From behind the wheel
When I lose control
I can only breathe your name
I can only breathe your name
I can only breathe your name
I can only breathe your name

“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Now, you can still believe in the nobility of that quote and appreciate its depth -- and that would be only human. But when most are confronted by reality, we choose NOT to use this as the guiding principle in how we make tough decisions. By necessity, we force ourselves to “look at things the way they are and ask why?” Liberals don’t. In fact, substituting “government” for the individual in the latter half of that quote identifies EXACTLY who Liberals are and what they believe in! That's what makes them dangerous.

We had to know America was in trouble when we found out the “O” in Journ“O”List stood for “O”bama. Every single name listed below should have an asterisk* by it for the rest of (what should be) their short-lived career -- that asterisk* forever identifying them as being complicit in helping elect Obama. Their conduct and lack of ethics was treasonous. Case closed.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Prior to our petulant prez punching out from his own presser, I said his “D is for Drive, R is for Reverse” slogan was even more lamer now because bringing Bubba back is going backwards. But with Obama in full meltdown and him self-ejecting, I suggest he try a new slogan:
“D is for Ditched and B.O. Bailed Out.”

Thursday, December 9, 2010

I don’t trust any numbers Obama puts out.Every time some new figure is released, some previously released figure gets (quietly) revised. And never in our country’s favor, as was the case again today.In each instance, the updated info paints a worse picture than the original info indicated. And the correction (naturally) won’t receive the same attention the initial data did.Call it smoke and mirrors. I call it lies...

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Bad news for the new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is good news for America. Is it that unreasonable to expect an informative debate over a complex treaty like this???
It is when the sand's running out on the lame duck Dems...
and Obama wants his trophy -- national security be damned!

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation… and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

*SPOILER ALERT* An alternate ending for George Orwell’s 1984:
“The Democrats gazed up at the enormous face. It had taken them scant seconds to fall in love with it -- the sneers behind the ears -- the snob behind the mob. O wondrous rapture as tears trickled down mindless faces, their joy so overwhelming. Because everything was all right now . . . because everyone was now Left! With nothing!!! The big “O”. Their cities in decay. These soulless zombies weak-in-the-knees, their struggle was now over. They had won the victory over themselves. They loved Obama.”
________________________________________________________________

The above was inspired by RightChange’s “1984 - Big Brother Obama”
Based on Apple’s 1984 MAC commercial that marked a new era in computers, and based on George Orwell’s book 1984, RightChange introduces our closing argument on Obama and the 111th Congress. This is also RightChange’s Kick-off for the 2012 Presidential Cycle.
The New Politizoid “1984 - Big Brother Obama” may be our best yet!
CAST: Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, George Soros, Maxine Waters, Moveon.org and Louis Farrakhan in their own words.
Yes. THESE ARE THEIR ACTUAL WORDS!http://vimeo.com/16398466

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Then, Obama tried the “blame the messaging” strategy, but that didn’t work either. Because we got the message: Obama lies, and Obama sucks. So we voted accordingly.

Later, after seeing himself portayed on Newsweek’s cover as the juggling president-god, Obama tried the “blame the job” strategy. But that couldn’t work either: We knew the problem was not with the Office of the Presidency -- it’s with its occupant.

And now this: Obama is trying the “blame the internet” strategy -- the SAME INTERNET that has THOUSANDS of news stories, video links and sound bites of the “man” himself telling us IN HIS OWN WORDS about his Muslim faith -- including him telling us how “The Muslim call to prayer is one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”

Hmmm... It sure sounds like Obama makes the case not for but AGAINST himself. Just saying...

So what’s next in this idiotic progression? Maybe Obama will blame “dumb dust” . . . or the Mayan calendar . . . or the grassy knoll. Only Obama knows...

But there’s one thing we do know for sure: Obama never heard a baby laughing, or a woman ♫ singing, or church bells ringing, or the sound of Freedom (which is not to be confused with The Sound of Philadelphia, which is also good). Because THOSE sounds are among the ones that are the prettiest sounds on Earth. Case closed.

Just like the Friday before a long weekend, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the best day to bury news. Stories can be “lost” in the hustle bustle of holiday travel and family friend get-togethers. Which is why the sick and sordid details of two unrelated incidents weren’t released until Wednesday.

Project “Barack Obama Green United States” burns absolutely no fossil fuels nor emits any hydrocarbons -- which obviously justifies the Stimulus dollars $pent on it, not to mention the thousands of traffic cop and pit crew jobs created-or-saved. It doesn’t matter that no one still can’t go anywhere...because it's green!

So let me get this straight: First, the landing gear from one of the planes lands farther away from the site where these Muslims want to build their mosque (but they STILL say it’s not at Ground Zero).

And now this: These Muslims apply for federal money specifically intended to help those affected by the attack at Ground Zero — but their mosque is STILL not at Ground Zero???

What the hey??? Oh, that’s right… Obama thinks it only natural that we taxpayers fund a mosque at Ground Zero because he thinks it’s HI$ money to spend and (possibly) HIS church to attend. He did say “the Muslim call to prayer is the prettiest sound on Earth.” I guess he never heard an American woman sing ♫ a good country tune…

Imagine my disgust when 33 minutes into Wednesday night's show Special Report with Bret Baier on Fox News, I see the mug of one Michael P. Meehan (aka “The Thug”) being interviewed concerning Obama’s political fortunes-to-be in 2012.

Hello?! Does Fox News even vet these people?!?

“The Thug” appears in the videos below doing what (I guess) he does best: Assaulting a reporter. Which brings us to who this guy is: Michael P. Meehan is a Democrat Neanderthal and operative with Blue Line Strategic Communications. And Blue Line is proud of the kind of work he does -- so proud in fact, they tweeted it:

A look at Meehan’s public profile and bio both list him, ironically, as a communications and “messaging” specialist. They also highlight the campaign strategizing work done for numerous Democrats, including Kerry, Daschle, Boxer, and of course, Obama. Now that sounds like a breeding ground (cesspool?) if there ever was one!

Personally, I don’t think Michael P. Meehan aka “The Thug” should be used as a spokesman on ANY Fox News program -- unless he is FIRST IDENTIFIED as the Democrat staffer and “Thug” who knocked that nice Weekly Standard reporter down to the ground.

Otherwise, the “message” Fox News is sending is violence works. And that’s not right. Because Michael P. Meehan aka “The Thug” is no “communications specialist” -- and to give him a national voice in light of the “message” he sent out last January is just plain wrong. Case closed.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Sure, there was that economy thing and ObamaCare and, well… the usual long list that began spicing up Republican poll numbers and the final results on election day.

But the approach of the Thanksgiving holiday reminds that maybe, just maybe, the real answer to the thorough repudiation of the Obama White House can be found in, of all things, two very different presidential proclamations for Thanksgiving.

The first, which was literally the first, was signed by Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863.

The second, by now a standard presidential duty of Lincoln's successors, was issued by Barack Obama on November 23, 2009.

The difference? The very notable difference that has been in one form or another telegraphed to the American people by the Obama White House.

God and His connection to American values had suddenly gone missing from a Thanksgiving Proclamation by a President of the United States.

The story of Lincoln's proclamation is fairly well known. Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor of the day (famous, among other things, for writing the words to the nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb) noticed that in parts of America -- New England most prominently -- Thanksgiving had been celebrated with something approaching regularity since the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620. In other sections -- the South, for one -- the holiday was barely known if at all.

Hale was nothing if not a believer in God and the American Union, as well as being a fierce opponent of slavery. She had made it her business to advocate and get action on those symbols that celebrated America and what today is known as American exceptionalism. She is said to have raised $30,000 for the construction of the monument celebrating the battle of Bunker Hill -- and when funds were still needed went to work getting readers to donate to the cause. They did -- and the monument celebrating the first major battle of the American Revolution still stands in Boston. She was one of the first to urge the preservation of George Washington's legendary home at Mount Vernon, Virginia.

Since 1846 Hale had written editorials calling for a uniform national celebration of Thanksgiving, writing four presidents and dozens and dozens of congressmen to push her cause. Now, as America was embroiled in a ferocious Civil War where the concept of "Union" was very much in play, Hale tried again with a fifth president, Abraham Lincoln.

"Sir," briskly began this formidable editor, going on to make the case that Thanksgiving "now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution."

Lincoln responded with a Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 3, 1863. He was only a month from dedicating a cemetery to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg, deep into both the conduct of the war while soon to deliver one of history's most famous speeches in which he would say "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln understood the importance of Hale's message.

Secretary of State William Seward, the one-time Lincoln rival now a devoted friend and political soul mate, wrote the draft for the proclamation. Whether Lincoln tinkered with it is unknown. Read it, approve of it -- and most importantly affix his signature to it -- he did.

Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation, fixing the last Thursday of November as the official holiday, is to this day a sterling illustration of the relationship Lincoln and millions of Americans of his time -- and ours -- saw between God, religious faith, and the existence of America itself.

References to God or the Almighty and the relationship between the Creator and the idea that is America begin in the brief Lincoln Thanksgiving Proclamation's second sentence and continue throughout.

• There is an immediate nod to the "heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God."

• Next comes a reference to "the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy."

• There was an invitation: "I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

• Then, a recommendation: "And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him."

• And a commendation to: "commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife."

• Lincoln wanted to make sure Americans would "implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation."

• Last but not least, for America Lincoln wanted God "to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union."

These seven separate, repeated references to God in Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation unmistakably signaled Lincoln's understanding of the core meaning of that long ago voyage of a tiny band of Pilgrims who arrived on the wintry shores of New England in November of 1620.

It was the Pilgrims, of course, who first set the course of American history with the writing of the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of what would become the American nation. Signed on board the namesake small ship which had brought them across the cold and stormy Atlantic in search of religious freedom, the Mayflower Compact immediately acknowledged the role of God in the New World. The very first sentence set the tone that Lincoln would seek to immortalize with his Thanksgiving Proclamation 243 years later. The sentence was simple, straightforward and direct:

In the name of God, Amen.

What followed in the even shorter Compact were still more references to "the Glory of God," the "advancement of the Christian Faith," and being "in the presence of God." It was here that the connection between the idea of America and, as the later Declaration of Independence would have it, "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" was established. When in 1776 it came time for Thomas Jefferson and his small committee to put pen to paper in the heat of a Philadelphia summer, there were already 156 years of American tradition challenging the world to the realization that if no one else on the globe understood the connection, Americans realized of themselves "that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

As American history moved forward from Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation, other Presidents consistently returned to the same theme, reaching out every Thanksgiving season to remind the latest generation of Americans of the nation's connection to God. Whether it was Democrats like Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy, or Lincoln's Republican successors Calvin Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, every president made certain to underline the connection between America, Thanksgiving and the role of God.

• Franklin Roosevelt made of his 1940 Thanksgiving Proclamation a prayer, which began: "On the same day, in the same hour, let us pray: Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will."

• Harry Truman opened his 1946 Thanksgiving Proclamation this way: "At this season, when the year is drawing to a close, tradition suggests and our hearts require that we render humble devotion to Almighty God for the mercies bestowed upon us by His goodness. Devoutly grateful to Divine Providence for the richness of our endowment and the many blessings received, may we continue to give a good account of our stewardship by utilizing our resources in the service of mankind."

• For Dwight Eisenhower the holiday was about "rendering thanks to Almighty God for the bounties of the soil and for His mercies throughout the year."

• JFK opened with a quote: "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord."

• Ronald Reagan's began his references to God in the third sentence of his very first Thanksgiving Proclamation: "In keeping with America's heritage, one day each year is set aside for giving thanks to God for all of His blessings."

In other words, since Abraham Lincoln began this very American tradition, all of his successors have made a point as the chief magistrate of the land of reminding Americans of the role of the Almighty in the creation of the American Republic. In consistently and unhesitatingly doing so they have highlighted the need for "thanksgiving" to variously, "God," "the Almighty," "Divine Providence" or some other formulation of a higher power.

Until, that is, the Thanksgiving Proclamation of 2009 -- the first from President Barack Obama. After a passing reference to a George Washington quote (the first President had observed "by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God,") -- that's it. God does a vanishing act from the Obama Thanksgiving Proclamation. What Americans get instead are thanks to "Native Americans," the fact that Americans "observe traditions from every culture," must band together to be "serving our communities" and "have gratitude for all we have received in the past year; to express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own; and to share our bounty with others."

To whom that gratitude should be expressed is clear. That would be anybody but God.

What is expressed is a collection of far-left politically correct idolatry, collectivism as a Thanksgiving Proclamation for (and from) the community organizer.

One can only marvel at how deeply, instinctively negative is the reaction of Americans after a mere two years of the Obama presidency. What began with such hope for so many, and in political terms solid start-off marks of presidential approval in the 70% range, has plummeted as Americans began to focus on an Obama trait dismissed during the election as a curiosity at best or at worse some sort of aberration.

Late, perhaps, but the realization of what it means to have a president sit for twenty years in the pews of a preacher whose most famous line is "God damn America!" has hit home.

For two years Americans have watched uneasily as, incident by incident images began to accumulate of a President ashamed of the traditions and culture of his own country. The traditions at the very heart of the celebratory document known as the Thanksgiving Proclamation.

This is a president who could not bring himself to acknowledge American exceptionalism, saying instead: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

He managed not once but twice to misquote the Declaration of Independence itself, saying on one of these occasions, the Hispanic Caucus Institute's Annual Awards Gala on Sept. 15: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights: life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's what makes us unique." The phrase "endowed by their Creator" simply vanished in the Obama telling. Seven days later, he did it again at a fundraiser, this time mentioning "inalienable rights" that "everybody is endowed with." Exactly who endowed "everybody" the President did not or would not say. Eventually, after questioning at a White House briefing and as things turned desperate on the campaign trail, he began using "Creator" in his speeches.

His outreach to Muslims should, under the circumstances of a post-9/11 world, not be considered extraordinary. George W. Bush reached out as well at a time when it counted. But only Obama has managed to give the impression to Americans that he actually sympathizes with the Muslim extremist hatred for America -- many believing he is in fact some sort of secret Muslim -- and that in fact he repeatedly demonstrates by word and deed that American history and its role in the world is in need of continuous apology.

All of which comes back to the hard political fact of this Thanksgiving week of 2010.

The Obama approach has just been thoroughly repudiated by Americans no longer startled but outraged by what many see as their President's shame of America. His refusal to discuss the role of God and the Almighty in his first Thanksgiving Proclamation serves as a symbol of just what has so alienated the American people from this President.

Surely the 2010 election was not lost by Democrats because of a Thanksgiving Proclamation. It was lost without doubt because whether the subject was jobs, the economy, ObamaCare, the size and role of government or America's role in the world, this administration has become the very symbol of a radical, far-left agenda so repulsed by the ideas that brought America's founding fathers to these shores that the only thing of which they are capable is silence or rage.

Thanksgiving Proclamations not being the ideal vehicle for leftist rage, silence was apparently chosen for 2009.

What will be said this week when the White House issues the second Thanksgiving Proclamation of the Age of Obama?

God only knows.

Maybe He will make a comeback to the place and position Abraham Lincoln and his successors save one understood were, in Lincoln's words, "justly due" on the "day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

But in a curious fashion indeed, the 2010 election was about the values of Barack Obama.

Now, for something completely different, here are the 25 best quotes about liberals. Enjoy!

25) Whenever I read liberals reporting about the goings- on of conservatives I always get the nature-documentary vibe. A liberal reporter puts on his or her Dian Fossey hat in order to attempt to write another installment of Conservatives in the Mist. I've followed this particular brand of reporting for years, it's almost a fetish of mine. Most attempts fail. Of these lesser varieties, there's fear ("Troglodytes!"), mockery ("Irrelevant troglodytes!"), condescension ("I had to explain to them they're troglodytes."), bewilderment ("Why don't they understand they're troglodytes?"), astonishment (Dear God, they're not all troglodytes!"), and a few combinations of all the above. -- Jonah Goldberg

24) There are no bad guys on the left. There are only people who’ve been driven to desperation by conservative evil. -- Allahpundit

23) Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago. -- Ann Coulter

22) Inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out. They don't like to have another point of view in the room that they don't squash and the way they try to squash it is by character assassination and name calling. -- David Horowitz

21) The reason any conservative's failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It's an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites. -- Ann Coulter

20) Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust.

There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization. -- Evan Sayet

19) It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely "patriotic" about running down America. Anti-Americanism -- a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization -- became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before. Flag burners became the truest "patriots" because dissent -- not just from partisan politics, but the American project itself -- became the highest virtue. -- Jonah Goldberg

18) But all liberals only have empathy for the exact same victims -- always the ones that are represented by powerful liberal interest groups. -- Ann Coulter

17) Liberals have created, and the minority leadership has exploited, a community of dependent people, unaware of the true route to prosperity and happiness: self-reliance and self-investment. Instead, people are told that America is unjust, unfair, and full of disadvantages. They are told that their only hope is for government to fix their problems. What has happened is that generations of people have bought into this nonsense and as a result have remained hopelessly mired in poverty and despair -- because the promised solutions don't work. And they will never work -- they never have. -- Rush Limbaugh

16) One of the overriding points of Liberal Fascism is that all of the totalitarian "isms" of the left commit the fallacy of the category error. They all want the state to be something it cannot be. They passionately believe the government can love you, that the state can be your God or your church or your tribe or your parent or your village or all of these things at once. Conservatives occasionally make this mistake, libertarians never do, liberals almost always do. -- Jonah Goldberg

15) Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values, Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more than from their religion. -- Dennis Prager

14) When one becomes a liberal, he or she pretends to advocate tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, they're doing so for purely selfish reasons. It's the human equivalent of a puppy dog's face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. In short, liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler, than saying something like, “please lower my taxes” -- Greg Gutfeld

13) Stupidity is a luxury and you will find time and time and time and again that those who are overwhelmingly on the left are those who can afford to be. -- Evan Sayet

12) With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society. -- Ann Coulter

11) If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they--and we all--can be “liberated.” The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions--the vision--which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback. -- Thomas Sowell

10) Liberals claim to love gays when it allows them to vent their spleen at Republicans. But disagree with liberals and their first response is to call you gay. Liberals are gays' biggest champions on issues most gays couldn't care less about, like gay marriage or taxpayer funding of photos of men with bullwhips up their derrieres. But who has done more to out, embarrass, and destroy the lives of gay men who prefer to keep their orientation private than Democrats? Who is more intolerant of gays in the Republican Party than gays in the Democratic Party? -- Ann Coulter

9) End results that work that don't involve government threaten liberals. -- Rush Limbaugh

8) In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong--surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences. -- Thomas Sowell

7) That is one reason "feelings" and "compassion" are two of the most often used liberal terms. "Character" is no longer a liberal word because it implies self-restraint. "Good and evil" are not liberal words either as they imply a moral standard beyond one's feelings. In assessing what position to take on moral or social questions, the liberal asks him or herself, "How do I feel about it?" or "How do I show the most compassion?" -- not "What is right?" or "What is wrong?" For the liberal, right and wrong are dismissed as unknowable, and every person chooses his or her own morality. -- Dennis Prager

6) In their haste to be wiser and nobler than others, the anointed have misconceived two basic issues. They seem to assume (1) that they have more knowledge than the average member of the benighted and (2) that this is the relevant comparison. The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear though social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite group. -- Thomas Sowell

5) Everyone moralizes. The suggestion that liberals aren't moralizers is so preposterous it makes it hard for me to take any of them seriously when they wax indignant about "moralizers." Almost every day, they tell us what is moral or immoral to think and to say about race, taxes, abortion — you name it. They explain it would be immoral for me to spend more of my own money on my own children when that money could be spent by government on other people’s children. In short, they think moralizing is fine. They just want to have a monopoly on the franchise. -- Jonah Goldberg

4) If you can somehow force a liberal into a point- counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you've said -- unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It's like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder. -- Ann Coulter

3) My analysis is that most faith based systems depend upon an absolute moral order. The declaration of things as absolutely evil or absolutely good, as sin or virtue, puts liberalism into a horrible position because it's founded on no judgment on anything. As a result, any faith that is seriously practiced or understood is a challenge to the politics that depend on constituencies that would rather not be told that their choices are bad and their lives are not virtuous. -- Hugh Hewitt

2) The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else? -- Thomas Sowell

1) To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. -- Charles Krauthammer

Friday, November 19, 2010

We all remember the reason Obama chose Biden as his VP -- and no, it wasn't because his gaffes draw attention away from the president. It was because Biden supposedly had that "statesmanship" and "foreign policy experience" (believe it or not) that Obama didn't. (And boy he still doesn't.) Yes, we're talking about the very same Biden (you could substitute Obama here too), who as senator(s), did everything possible to lose the American war against terrorism over there, but still claimed its success as their "great achievement" -- that's the guise, er, I mean, guy(s).

Well, it seems that Biden has stepped "in it" again -- or as some say, Biden has put his foot (the one he uses to step "in it") in his mouth again. Yuk. And this time Biden's timing couldn't be worse. Because Obama is currently overseas at the NATO Summit where he's scheduled to meet privately with Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- who, according to Biden, is still a child learning how to ride a bike!
I give you this diplomatic "gem" from Vice President Biden:

"Daddy is going to start to take the training wheels off..."

Well folks, that's the (sad) state of our foreign affairs. You could say Biden's statement on "Daddy's" Afghanistan policy is condescending or embarrassing or patronizing or just plain stupid! Or all the above. But one thing we know for sure: It's not the kind of "statesmanship" or "foreign policy experience" we expect or want or need. We'll just have to wait until they take their ball and go back home to put more playing cards in their bicycle spokes and step in dog shit again.

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, November 19th, 1863:"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Perhaps the most famous battle of the Civil War took place at Gettysburg, PA, July 1 to July 3, 1863. At the end of the battle, the Union's Army of the Potomac had successfully repelled the second invasion of the North by the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia. Several months later, President Lincoln went to Gettysburg to speak at the dedication of the cemetery for the Union war dead. Speaking of a "new birth of freedom," he delivered one of the most memorable speeches in U.S. history.

At the end of the Battle of Gettysburg, more than 51,000 Confederate and Union soldiers were wounded, missing, or dead. Many of those who died were laid in makeshift graves along the battlefield. Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin commissioned David Wills, an attorney, to purchase land for a proper burial site for the deceased Union soldiers. Wills acquired 17 acres for the cemetery, which was planned and designed by landscape architect William Saunders.

The cemetery was dedicated on November 19, 1863. The main speaker for the event was Edward Everett, one of the nation’s foremost orators. President Lincoln was also invited to speak “as Chief Executive of the nation, formally [to] set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.” At the ceremony, Everett spoke for more than 2 hours; Lincoln spoke for 2 minutes.

President Lincoln had given his brief speech a lot of thought. He saw meaning in the fact that the Union victory at Gettysburg coincided with the nation’s birthday; but rather than focus on the specific battle in his remarks, he wanted to present a broad statement about the larger significance of the war. He invoked the Declaration of Independence, and its principles of liberty and equality, and he spoke of “a new birth of freedom” for the nation. In his brief address, he continued to reshape the aims of the war for the American people—transforming it from a war for Union to a war for Union and freedom. Although Lincoln expressed disappointment in the speech initially, it has come to be regarded as one of the most elegant and eloquent speeches in U.S. history.
From: Our Documents -- Gettysburg Address (1863)http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=old&doc=36

I just got my healthcare renewal form. My rates are up over 30% across the board, and that’s with a $5,700 deductible. This is the fruit of Barack Obama’s health care “reform,” to make healthcare affordable and accessible for everyone.

Obama really makes me sick — oops, I can’t afford to get sick.

I want a waiver — oops, I don’t know any crooked Democrats (is there any other kind?) who can fix it for me.

Who is the recipient of these goodies from this crooked administration? Unions, of course, and FOO (Friends of Obama).

Historian and finance analyst Kenneth Schortgen, Jr., notes in The Examiner that while Obama has given waivers for his new healthcare scheme to 111 corporations and other entities, the form to apply for a waiver is hard to find and harder to wade through, and:

“to receive a waiver it appears you must have political capital with the administration to be accepted. For most small businesses, you will be incurring the new taxes, fees, and programs that will add thousands to your bottom line, and in more than a few cases, might cause a small business to close their doors.”

Schortgen points out that “in March, AT&T reported from an internal study that the new Healthcare program will cost their company over $1 Billion in new and additional costs,” and that on the list of groups already granted waivers,

“unions are one of the largest entities given a waiver, and speaks to the political gifts given by the Administration to them. The Obama Presidency has proven their partnership with unions since 2008 to the detriment of small business.”

Okay, but Obama’s other policies must be in better shape, right? Wrong.

This week Ahed Khalfan Ghailani became the first detainee who has been held at Guantanamo to be tried in civilian court, under Obama’s policy of treating acts of war as law enforcement issues. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani faces charges of conspiracy and murder in jihad bombings in Africa that killed 224 people, including twelve Americans.

Today the jury was deliberating and a verdict was expected, but one of the jurors sent the judge a note asking to be replaced, because other jury members were giving her a hard time for “her opinions.” If the jury is deadlocked, it is unlikely that prosecutors could again bring together the witnesses who testified in this trial. Bringing witnesses from Kenya and Tanzania to testify would be hard, and maybe impossible, to repeat.

How about Obama’s foreign policy? Any good news there?

Obama has vowed to defeat al-Qaeda, but this week British General Sir David Richards said that a defeat of al-Qaeda was “unnecessary and would never be achieved.”

I agree with General Sir David Richards that al-Qaeda can’t be beaten, but not for the same reasons. Clearly, if we are afraid to freely discuss the ideology and motives behind this global war on the West, then we cannot beat it. If we dare not speak its name, surely we cannot defeat it. If, instead, those who speak to the religious ideology that compels war against the “non-believers” are the ones demonized, surely it will defeat us.

Rules of engagement, political correctness, and foreign aid to our assassins make it impossible to defeat this enemy. Give me The Bush Doctrine — “you are either with us or against us” — as opposed to The Obama Doctrine, “we are against us.”

Meanwhile, the Afghan Council that is trying to end the war there has recommended that Taliban prisoners be freed from Gitmo to join peace talks back home.

The very idea that we would be releasing Taliban terrorists to join “peace” negotiations is really scary. Not for the obvious reason that upon their release they will join the Muslim army and kill our soldiers, but scary because of the fact that our “leadership” would even consider such suicidal insanity.

The idea of peace to the enemy is a “pax islamica,” a world living under the horror of Islamic law. Obama’s jihad against Israel, while effectively aiding and abetting the most violent and imperialistic Islamic supremacists, is a lethal cocktail for freedom-loving peoples.

Meanwhile, Obama is strangely silent on the case of Sayed Mossa, who is awaiting trial in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity. Apostasy (conversion out of Islam) is punishable by death in Islamic law. In a similar case back in 2006, Abdul Rahman was spared the penalty of death and granted asylum in Italy after the Bush administration intervened. President Bush and others had insisted Afghanistan protect personal beliefs.

American blood and treasure in Afghanistan…for what?

Where is President Obama? His silence is deafening and dangerous. Silence is complicity.

Tell me again why we are expending priceless blood and billions in treasure on this Sharia state. If we are not fighting this, we are wasting our time.

Domestically and internationally, Obama’s presidency has been a disaster of incalculable proportions.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and is former associate publisher of the New York Observer. She is a regular columnist at Newsmax and her Op-Eds appear in the Washington Times, Human Events, the American Thinker, Israel National News, and other publications.http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/

Monday, November 15, 2010

"The Obama Administration has already handed out 111 ObamaCare waivers to US companies... And, they're hiding this from the American public. It takes 6 clicks to find out this information on the Health Care website. Unfortunately, if you're a small business or don't have connections you can't get a waiver for your company. That's the new reality under the Obama-Pelosi regime."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Uu_tI0hTw

Does one need more proof that Obama thinks he's "King"???
I don't think so...

And the Obama promise of "transparency" is﻿ six clicks away???
Of course it is.

Remember this???
This is what NBC's Robert George said about Obama's initial response to the Fort Hood massacre:
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident... But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks [that included] a "shout-out to Joe 'Medicine' Crow." http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/A-Disconnected-President.html

Remember this???
Nidal Malik Hasan took FOURTEEN innocent lives. The terrorist also killed the unborn child of Francheska Velez -- a fact lost on Obama who went to Fort Hood to "honor the 13 dead." As Velez lay dying, her last words were, "My baby! My baby!"

The Veteran, not the community organizer, gave us freedom to assemble.
The Veteran, not the reporter, gave us freedom of the press.
The Veteran, not the preacher, gave us freedom of religion.
The Veteran, not the lawyer, gave us the right to a fair trial.
The Veteran, not the politician, gave us the right to vote.
The Veteran, not the poet, gave us freedom of speech.
The Veteran salutes the Flag.
And the Veteran serves and is buried under the Flag.

To the members of The United States Armed Forces, past, present, and future: May God Bless you all.

Democrat strategist and Clinton adviser Mark Penn recently appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball to say that “Obama needs a similar” event like the Oklahoma City bombing to “reconnect” and “click” with the American people.

Seriously.

And Penn is NOT THE FIRST Clintonite to propose this.

In July, Democrat strategist and Clinton adviser Robert Shapiro also suggested the same when he said, “The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership. He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”

My first response to these statements is God Forbid something like that ever happens again.

My next response is to ask, “Where in the Hell do people like this come from?!”

As President Obama prepares for the G20 summit in South Korea this week, Sarah Palin is challenging the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, which will likely be a key issue at the talks. On Monday, in a keynote address at a trade-association convention in Phoenix, Palin will urge Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist” his “pump priming.” The United States, she says, “shouldn’t be playing around with inflation.”

Here are snippets from Palin’s prepared remarks obtained by National Review Online:

I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.

The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.

And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?

All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it’s not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That’s like an extra tax on earnings. And the worst part of it: because the Obama White House refuses to open up our offshore and onshore oil reserves for exploration, most of that money will go directly to foreign regimes who don’t have America’s best interests at heart.

We shouldn’t be playing around with inflation. It’s not for nothing Reagan called it “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.” The Fed’s pump priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared, and our allies worried. The German finance minister called the Fed’s proposals “clueless.” When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it’s time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist. We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings. We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It’s the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.

As a schoolboy in Jakarta, Barack Obama attended Muslim prayer sessions with his classmates against the wishes of his mother.

The US President's former grade three teacher said that Mr Obama - who was known as "Barry" when he attended the Menteng One school in Jakarta - studied the Koran and went to classes on Islam, despite the objections of Ann Dunham, a Catholic.

The teacher's recollections will add to speculation about Mr Obama's links to Islam during his much-anticipated visit to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, as part of his ten-day tour of Asia.

His middle name, Hussein, and the fact that his stepfather was a Muslim, have combined to perpetuate rumours about Mr Obama's religious leanings. The number of Americans who think that he is a Muslim has grown since his inauguration to one in five.

Mr Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, when he was 6, and lived there for four years. In his memoirs he recalled his time in the country as the "bounty of a young man's life" and there is affection and pride among Indonesians for the boy who ended up as President of the United States.

The teacher, Effendi, who taught at Menteng One for 29 years, remembers Mr Obama as a "fat, curly-haired, curious boy". The school had an international mix of pupils, including Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims.

Mr Obama attended classes on Islam while the Christians attended classes on Christianity, said Effendi. Barry, he said, was alone among the pupils in that he insisted on attending both.

"His mother did not like him learning Islam, although his father was a Muslim. Sometimes she came to the school; she was angry with the religious teacher and said 'Why did you teach him the Koran?'" said Effendi.

"But he kept going to the classes because he was interested in Islam. He would also join the other pupils for Muslim prayers."

Questions over Mr Obama's religion were fuelled, in part, by comments about his Muslim roots made by Hillary Clinton during the Democratic party leadership campaign.

The conservative American media took the speculation further by claiming that Mr Obama attended a madrassa - Islamic school - as a child. Mr Obama's former classmates, however, have dismissed the claims as nonsense.

The US President - who has cancelled a scheduled trip to Indonesia twice before - may be stymied again by air traffic disruption caused by an ash cloud emitted from Mount Merapi.

The volcano has been erupting since October 26, killing at least 117 people.

Mr Obama is due to arrive in Jakarta tomorrow after three days in India.

A third cancellation would not be welcomed in Indonesia, where some offence has already been taken at the brevity of the visit.

The homecoming anticipated so keenly by Indonesians has been reduced to less than 24 hours; the shortest amount of time he will spend in any country on the Asia itinerary.

Pupils at Menteng One, who have been rehearsing songs and dances for more than a year, will be particularly disappointed.

Their headmistress has not yet had the heart to tell them that Mr Obama will not, after all, visit their school.

"When I told them in March that he had cancelled his trip again some of the children cried and asked why?" HJ Hasimah said. "I don't know what I will tell them this time."

“What has Obama done? Against the background of a darkening sky, all of the past Presidents of the United States gather before the White House, as if to commemorate some great event. In the left hand corner of the painting sits a man. That man, with his head bowed appears distraught and hopeless as he contemplates his future. Some of the past Presidents try to console him while looking in the direction of the modern Presidents as if to say, "What have you done?" Many of these modern Presidents, seemingly oblivious to anything other than themselves, appear to be congratulating each other on their great accomplishments. In front of the man, paper trash is blowing in the wind. Crumpled dollar bills, legislative documents, and, like a whisper—the U.S. Constitution beneath the foot of Barack Obama.”

I write this letter as a patriot, a taxpayer, a lifelong resident and as concerned citizen of what I consider to be the greatest nation ever known to man, the United States of America.

I am Caucasian, so let's get the racial aspect out of the way to start with. This letter has nothing to do with your race. I lived through the cruelty of Jim Crow and segregation and learned early on in my life that the color of my skin does not make me better or worse than any other man.

We all remember Martin Luther King, Jr.'s statement about judging people, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, and I believe that with all my heart.

I believe that America is an exceptional country. We have been liberator, benefactor and leader of the free world for centuries. America is an example of what can be achieved by free people living under the free enterprise system.

We have led the world in technology, industry, science and medicine for a long time.

Our capitalist system guarantees that those who explore new worlds and bring us new products and better techniques are amply rewarded for their efforts, and this is as it should be.

A person who is the first one to get there and the last one to leave, who burns the midnight oil and never gives up until they realize their goals, are a boon to humankind. They're the ones who discover new cures, start new industries and create jobs.

These people deserve to be rewarded for their hard work and for the products and services they bring to make life better for all mankind.

Mr. President, it is my personal opinion that you want to take the well-earned rewards of these people and give it to those who have done nothing to deserve them.

It's really redistribution of wealth, and it's nothing new. It's been tried many places before and it has miserably failed in every one of them.

It's called socialism.

Am I calling you a socialist? Yes, I am. I firmly believe that you are a socialist and a globalist, and that you think America should have a comeuppance and have our playing field leveled to match those of other countries not as industrious or as innovative as we are.

Mr. President, how can you support the building of a mosque in the very same area where Islamic radicals murdered so many Americans?

Just who's side are you on?

Am I accusing you of being a Muslim? No I'm not, but the jury is still out a little bit on that subject in my mind, because many times your sympathies seem to lean in that direction. You need to watch who you bow to Mr. President.

You have betrayed a whole generation of African-Americans who voted for you because they really believed all that junk about "hope and change," they really thought you were going to do something great and the only thing you've done is to make their jobs disappear and their health insurance go up.

You and your party have corrupted duly elected officials in an effort to get your legislative agenda passed. Remember the "Louisiana Purchase" and the "Cornhusker Kickback," and that's just a couple we know about, but you bought off a bunch of congressmen and senators, knowing that you were going against the will of the majority of Americans, because you think that you and your arrogant friends know more about what's good for America than the citizens your disastrous actions effect.

Am I accusing you of being an elitist? You bet.

I don't believe you take the Islamic threat to America nearly as seriously as you should. You use semantics like "Overseas Contingency Operation" and "Man Caused Disasters" to soften your rhetoric toward people who would like nothing better than decapitate the entire population of America.

And Mr. President, if you'd really like to know the kind of warriors who are fighting the "Overseas Contingency Operation," and you would like to really know about what kind of enemies they're fighting, you should read a book called Lone Survivor by a brave, young Navy Seal named Marcus Lutrell who went to hell and back for his country, and is still a dedicated patriot. I think you'd find it enlightening, Mr. President and after you finish it would you pass it on to Janet Napolitano? And by the way, tell her that my invitation to take her to Iraq and show her some "Man Caused Disasters" is still open.

Am I calling you naïve? Absolutely.

You seem to think that America has an endless supply of tax dollars for you to waste and give away, and the debt you've piled up could well bankrupt the greatest nation on earth.

Am I calling you a failure, Mr. President? With all due respect that's exactly what I'm doing.

—Charlie Daniels is an award-winning country musician. His latest album is called "Land That I Love"